20 posts categorized "Political History"

March 30, 2025

THE PENGUIN LESSONS

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Punk heart still beating.

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ColeSmithey.comBased on Tom Michell's 2016 memoir about his time spent teaching English during a coup in Argentina in 1976, "The Penguin Lessons" is a stellar politically-minded comedy, packed with subtle and not-so-subtle humor, historic political perspective, and Steve Coogan's infectious wit.

And, there's a penguin. I know what you're thinking, another shaggy dog story. Not so fast.

"The Penguin Lessons" is all about metaphors. As such, our penguin guide gifts us with the power of identifying underlying meanings in pretty much everything that the movie has to offer.

ColeSmithey.com

Facing up to social responsibility is on the list for Steve Coogan's instinctively truth-telling rendition of Tom Michell. Lying takes too much effort. It's easier for Tom to rip off the band-aid when touchy questions arise.

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Throw in a dramatic tearjerker aspect, and you've got some sublime entertainment.

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Björn Gustafsson is excellent as Tom's taller-but-less-confident co-worker.

Serious and funny in equal parts, the well-paced narrative gravitates toward deeper truths than you realize until you are stuck in its deep water. 

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However potentially treacherous the dramatic terrain of working with children and/or animals, Steve Coogan dances through the tricky narrative like the experienced dancer he proves to be in one of the movie's pivotal sequences.

It's always value-added when there's dance involved. This sequence shines.

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Here is a family movie built to stand the test of time. "The Penguin Lessons" will be a safe bet when you see it available to watch on an airplane.

Steve Coogan's comic genius seems to always find its level. This thematically rich material perfectly matches Coogan's advanced skill-set.

ColeSmithey.com

Hilarious. I couldn't possibly count how many times I laughed or cried during this masterful picture.

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Director Peter Cattaneo ("The Full Monty") captures every microscopic nuance of comedy, tragedy, satire, romance, and mystery in this wonderful movie. 

Impressive.

Rated PG-13. 110 mins.

5 Stars

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

June 27, 2024

PRIDE

Welcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.ColeSmithey.comThis ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

ColeSmithey.com

 

Undone by Broad Strokes
Historic LGBT Battle in the UK Goes Soft

By Cole Smithey


Screen Shot 2024-08-05 at 12.24.26 AMAll attempts fail at forcing a by-the-numbers narrative template on a fact-based story about unlikely bedfellows uniting against Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's mid '80s reign of anti-union and anti-gay rhetoric and public policies.

Newbie screenwriter Stephen Beresford plays a game of hide-the-protagonist that further distracts from a diluted "feel-good" movie that should have by all rights been a slam-dunk.

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London, circa June 1984, is the site of a Gay Pride march where 20-year-old Joe (George MacKay) is inadvertently lured into joining the parade in spite of his meek efforts to avoid holding a sign that reads "Queers — Better Blatant Than Latent."

Still insecure about his own gayness, shy Joe comes out of his shell after being welcomed into the fold of a local gay rights group, home-based in a cozy neighborhood bookstore called Gay's the Word. Sidelining his culinary studies to be a pastry chef seems a fair exchange for Joe's sudden decision to follow his other passions.

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Mark Ashton (Ben Schnetzer) is the charismatic gay rights firebrand whose impromptu mid-parade decision to represent a group of striking miners, as equally despised as the gays by Thatcher's vindictive regime, sounds a clarion call that eventually rings through in the UK's corridors of power. Mark rebrands the group from "Gay Liberation Front" to "Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners" (LGSM).

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After taking up sidewalk collections, Mark transports his small but passionate alliance to the South Wales coal-mining town of Onllwyn to donate the monies to the miners' poorly articulated cause. Running with the idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, LGSM recruits the help of Onllwyn's able-bodied community club spokesperson Dai (Paddy Considine) to introduce them to the miners. Although the town's National Union of Mineworkers take seething umbrage at receiving support from such a group of "perverts," they don't turn down the money.

The film's neglect of the cause and nature of the miner's strike is a glaring oversight that also weakens its potential as serious work of agitprop cinema.

ColeSmithey.com

Rocks thrown, rather than the personalities of the bullies throwing them, express the era's cultural reality of intolerance. The film's broad comic tone undermines the seriousness of the sometimes-violent drama at hand. A perky musical score and colorful set designs that border on the garish exist at odds with the vital nature of the story. At times the movie feels like an Ealing comedy on steroids. Nevertheless, its use of Billy Bragg's version of "There is Power in a Union" plays all the right chords when it finally arrives. ColeSmithey.com

Four too many subplots splinter the film as Mark's motley group of gays shuttle between London and Onllwyn's Dulias Valley town while drumming up more financial aid for the miners. Confusion arises about which character the filmmakers intend the audience to invest most of its interest in. Strong supporting performances from Dominic West, playing the first UK victim of the AIDS virus, and Bill Nighy, as Cliff, a retired miner who happens to be a closeted gay, help keep the film entertaining even if the movie doesn't add up to the sum of its parts. Even Imelda Staunton's feisty portrayal of Hefina, a community organizer in Onllwyn, gets lost in the shuffle.

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However chuckle-inducing its use of broad comedy might be — witness a gaggle of little old Welsh ladies pouring over gay porn and admiring an oversized dildo — the movie puts too much weight on the comic side of the scales to achieve its ostensible purpose, namely putting the audience squarely inside an essential chapter of the LGBTQ movement's battle for cultural equality in the UK.

Rated R. 120 mins.

2 Stars

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

October 17, 2023

THE DAMNED — SHOCKTOBER!

ColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.comWelcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does. This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

ColeSmithey.com

ColeSmithey.comColeSmithey.com

ColeSmithey.comThe first of Luchino Visconti's "German Trilogy" of films (which includes "Death in Venice" and "Ludwig") is set in high society Germany during the early '30s. The Essenbecks — an industrialist family modeled after the Krupp family's steel production company — are brought down and consolidated into the Nazi war machine after the infamous Reichstag fire in Berlin on February 27, 1933.

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Hitler used the arsonist attack as an excuse to suspend civil liberties for the German people and assassinate his communist rivals. Liberties, such as habeas corpus, freedom of the press, and “secrecy of the post and telephone,” remained in place throughout Hitler’s reign, which ended in April of 1945.

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Members of the SS murder the Essenbecks's anti-Nazi patriarch Baron Joachim (Albrecht Schoenhals). Investigators photograph his bloody body resting on the opulent bed that once provided comfort. The political assassination sets into motion the collapse of the Essenbeck family, an aristocratic representation of an “old” Germany that Hitler sought to obliterate.

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As with “The Leopard,” Visconti is fascinated with the trappings of aristocracy, and their impermanent nature under the threat of fascist ideologies. All riches are temporary.     

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The company's like-minded vice president Herbert Thallmann (Umberto Orsini) is falsely indicted for Joachim’s murder before escaping from Gestapo forces that incarcerate his wife (Charlotte Rampling), and children at the Dachau concentration camp. It wasn’t only Jews who were sent to the camps. The family’s industrial empire slips into the cunning hands of Dirk Bogarde’s anti-hero Friedrich Bruckmann, a shortsighted opportunist mentored by SS officer Aschenbach (Helmut Grien), himself a would-be thief looking to co-opt the Essenbeck fortune and status.

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Visconti stylishly captures the frenzied debauchery and violence that the Nazis employed throughout the era, including the Night of the Long Knives wherein Hitler's execution squads massacred his political enemies — the paramilitary Brownshirts known as the SA.

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Written by Visonti, with Enrico Medioli and Nicola Badalucco, "The Damned" is an incendiary precursor to Nazi-era films like Liliana Cavani's "The Night Porter" (1974), Tinto Brass's pornographic "Salon Kitty" (1976), and even the musical play and film "Cabaret."

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By boldly confronting the psycho-sexual depravity of the Nazi mindset all the way through to is inevitable incestuous nature, Visconti creates a specific cinematic vernacular for viewing and discussing Hitler's manic ideology.

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That Visconti's iconic vision became a cinematic touchstone for other influential filmmakers is a testament to the Italian director's lasting power as a storyteller and as an important conduit of historical information.   

Rated R. 156 mins.

5 Stars SF SHOCKTOBER!Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

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